September 3, 2024 • 38 mins
Kian Sadeghi shares his journey, beginning with a personal tragedy that inspired the creation of Nucleus. He explains the decreasing cost and increasing value of genome sequencing and his decision to drop out of UPenn to focus on build a biotech company. Kian shares the challenges he faced and the strategies he used to raise $18 Million from investors such as Alexis Ohanian. He highlights the advantages of being a young founder and demystifies genome sequencing. The conversation explores the future of genome data, its integration with personal hardware, and the hurdles in building consumer trust. Kian also reflects on the role of PhDs, the long-term vision for Nucleus, the lessons learned from failures, and how he manages stress.
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(00:00):
Ninety percent of people don't know if theyhave a genetic merit that increases the risk
for these conditions.
I mean, it's pretty insane.
This guy is Kian Sadeghi.
He's a Penn dropout who built a biotech companythat can predict the diseases you might die
from, and how to prevent them from happening.
Last month, I had him at our studio and askedhim to share with me his story and the secret
to how it all works.
So my cousin actually went to bed one night anddidn't wake up the next day.
(00:23):
At the time, you know, I asked my parents, howdoes this happen?
How has this happened?
They kept saying, "No, bad genetics, badgenetics."
Why did you decide to drop out?
You're in
your bedroom.
You're one person.
You wake up one day.
You go from literally having nothing.
No money.
No resources.
Do you have to go
to college?
At that point, we became one of the mostwell-backed genetics companies ever.
Why should somebody like myself even care aboutgetting my whole genome sequenced?
Do you care about being healthy and livingforever?
(00:44):
I try to.
Okay.
So then whole genome is for you.
There's actually several applications of wholegenome sequencing.
One of the first is
Kian, who are you?
And why should the person that's listening tothis podcast listen to you?
That's a great question.
First off, thank you so much for having me.
So around maybe four and a half years ago atthis point, I dropped out of Penn, and I went
(01:07):
all in on building what I thought of as thekind of application layer for DNA or software
for your DNA.
We are undergoing one of the most extraordinarydecreases in costs, one of the greatest
technological changes ever.
That is the decrease in cost of whole genomesequencing or reading the entirety of your DNA.
That used to cost $1 billion; today withNucleus, you can get that for just $3.99.
(01:31):
So I think from my perspective, we are reallybringing to everyone the frontier of genomic
science, which is gonna radically changesociety.
I wanna get back into your backstory tounderstand more about you and why you're on the
journey that you are today.
What event took place when you were youngerthat pushed you to dedicate your life towards
(01:52):
longevity?
I'm a first-generation American.
Both my parents are Persian.
They actually escaped Iran during the Septemberrevolution, came to America, specifically
Brooklyn where I still am.
And, unfortunately, I think the story ofNucleus begins with a personal tragedy.
So my cousin actually went to bed one night anddidn't wake up the next day.
She died in her sleep.
At the time, you know, I asked my parents, howdoes this happen?
How does this happen?
(02:13):
They kept saying no, bad genetics, badgenetics.
Didn't understand what that meant.
Eventually, though, I started studyinggenetics, and what I realized is that disease
isn't really an inherent property of humanbeings but can be viewed more as a problem to
be solved.
And if you'd actually correct for the error insomeone's DNA, you could, you know, well, cure
a disease.
So I joined one of the first do-it-yourselfgene-editing laboratories in the country, where
(02:34):
we engineered yeast to make limonene.
We added bacteria to make them resistant toantibiotics.
And I kind of started thinking, like, what ifyou combine the kind of depth and beauty of
biology with the iterability of programming?
And that led me to going to Penn, where Istudied computational biology for around a year
and a half.
And I was in BIO 221, which is a nice class.
(02:54):
And I remember the chairman of the biologydepartment brought up this beautiful chart, the
one I alluded to earlier in our conversation,and it showed the cost of actually sequencing
all of someone's DNA.
So not a small fraction.
So most of the genetic tests you've heard of,like 23andMe, for example, they look at less
than 0.1% of your DNA.
Right?
Because at the time in 2006, when a companylike 23andMe got started, the cost of
(03:16):
sequencing all 100% was maybe $10 million asample.
Okay?
I remember a couple of years ago, when I waslooking at this chart, the cost had gone down
from $10 million per sample to, at that point,a couple thousand.
And I remember thinking, like, well, what'sgonna happen when that cost goes from a
thousand to basically negligible.
And with that, that was kind of the inceptionof Nucleus, thinking about the gap between
(03:41):
almost what exists today and what's gonna existtomorrow.
And building what you want to exist in thefuture.
That's kind of the creation of Nucleus.
Why should somebody like myself even care aboutgetting my whole genome sequenced?
Like, what's the key value that you'reproviding?
Do you care about being healthy and livingforever?
I try to.
Okay.
So then whole genome is for you.
I think there's actually several applicationsof whole genome sequencing.
(04:03):
One of the first is, like, the name of mycousin, right, shared long QT or doctors
suspected she had long QT.
Long QT is something where if you know yourgenetic risk, you take something called a beta
blocker and reduces your risk of suddenly dyingby 10x.
So, obviously, that's, I mean, that literallysaves your life, a giant test.
Then there are cases where, things like breastcancer or even Alzheimer's, type 2 diabetes,
(04:27):
coronary artery disease, where you can takespecific preventative action today to mitigate
your risk for breast cancer, for example, ifyou always have a BRCA1 or BRCA2, more
aggressive earlier screening, even Alzheimer's,like, a neurogenetic disease.
There are actual lifestyle changes you can maketo reduce your risk of that condition.
Colorectal cancer is a great example, whereit's extremely preventable, right, if you have
(04:52):
greater genetic risk, but most people don'tknow.
There's a crazy statistic that around, I think,90% of people with what's called a pathogenic
variant for breast cancer, colorectal cancer,and familial hypercholesterolemia, which is
like high cholesterol, right, old diseases, bythe way, that are preventable and actionable.
Ninety percent of people don't know they have agenetic variant that increases the risk for
(05:14):
these conditions.
So that means it's pretty insane if you thinkabout it.
That's one other application yet another isobviously family planning.
Right?
You want to have healthy children.
Hundreds of millions of Americans do not knowif they're a carrier for a specific, rare
disease that they could potentially, if theirpartners also care, pass on to their children.
That's an obvious application of whole genomesequencing that anyone who wants to have kids
(05:36):
ought to get their genome sequenced.
Another application is pharmacogenomics, whichis how your DNA affects your metabolism of
different drugs.
And so today, if you look at these differentapplications, a lot of people don't know they
actually all exist in the genome.
It's kind of decentralized.
There are different tests with differentapplications.
Nucleus kind of combines 70,000 genetic tests,70,000 genetic tests into just one.
(05:58):
That's the power of whole genome sequencing.
You engineered yeast a long time ago
Yeah.
To make them resistant to antibiotics.
What did you learn about human biology at thattime?
I think one of the most interesting things isthat you can almost hack biology.
Like, you know, people always think abouthacking in the computer context, but you can
also hack biology, and that there's a code oflife, and the code of life is DNA.
(06:23):
And there are just sometimes these randomerrors that can have kind of disastrous
consequences, but through human beings'ingenuity, we have found a way to correct these
errors.
And I think that idea that biology ismalleable, I think that's really stuck with me
since then, and I think it will stick with meforever.
And you went to Penn,
(06:45):
For a bit.
For a bit.
You decided to drop out.
Why did you decide to drop out and what are thepeople around you who are close to you, your
family, friends, think about that.
I think for me, I was following my bliss.
There's a source of Campbell quote about havingyour inner being and inner plane sort of match
the physical plane, and that's bliss.
And me going after to build Nucleus, to sort ofdo the kind of mad scientist throwing in, going
(07:10):
to the woods and to start, you know,researching, that was my calling.
When you have a calling like that, you ought tohave the courage to go to, like, like, you
know, literally let go of what's, you know,behind what you know.
I found some I think I thought school too couldbe like kind of stifling.
I thought it to be sort of this place wherethere was a habit amongst very smart and
(07:31):
capable people to almost settle in almost likea it was like almost like a factory.
Yeah.
Right?
It was like a factory.
You come in, you know, they calm you down, youknow, you you know, they tried to kind of
stifle your individual creativity or individualgenius because everyone has it, and then they
found you off to McKinsey.
And, you know, that didn't feel right to me.
So I think that's why I left.
And, you know, obviously, my parents weren'thappy with it.
(07:52):
I mean, they're immigrants from Iran.
They very much believe in education as do I,but I think we had different models of kind of
what life could look like and what life couldbe.
I mean, it was very hard though, admittedly.
It's very hard that year.
I said in a previous podcast with, you know,the founder of Morning Brew, I said that, I was
motivated by both love and fear, love of thecraft of kind of building your understanding up
(08:12):
to a scientific frontier and productizing that.
But also a fear, right, a fear of failing, afear of, you know, disappointing basically
everyone I knew.
Also, this kind of constant stress from, youknow, parents and society more broadly with,
like, you're kind of wasting your time.
You're a waste of space almost.
So there was that love and that fear in thatbalance, but that balance also propelled me
(08:34):
forward to have almost a maniacal focus onbuilding.
You mentioned it was a very hard year.
What was going on behind the scenes orinternally in your head that you were thinking
about in trying to get done?
So one of the first things I did was I figuredthat I should read a research paper at the
(08:56):
frontier of genomics and then build myunderstanding up to that paper.
Right?
It's almost like, this is where I want to endup.
I don't understand these things.
Now let me go start researching those things.
So there's a lot of statistical genetics,computational genomics, a lot of independent
learning, a lot of notebooks.
I mean, there's a picture on Twitter of, like,I think eighteen subject notebooks with
(09:16):
material.
And so what you have to do when doingindependent work, deep independent research is
you both have to make the curriculum and thenoperate within the curriculum.
And that's the only thing a lot of people don'tfully understand, which is if you go to school,
for example, at school, you know, the firstday, what do they do?
They hand your syllabus.
You know, they say, okay.
This is what we're gonna do.
This is kind of the plan.
This is what we're gonna study.
(09:37):
And you're almost operating under someoneelse's kind of model of the subject.
The difficult thing about independent researchis actually not necessarily doing it.
It's what to do and in what progression.
That's actually the hard thing to figure out.
So you had to both because you also don't knowthe subject well enough to know what the steps
(10:00):
should be.
So there's so many difficulties with that.
So you kind of have to both be the designer ofyour system and then operate within your
system.
And I think something I realized during thisyear was that sort of all the kind of and it's
funny because I think about this a lot morewith startups, but all these sort of thinking
that I had been operating in my entire lifedissipated, was gone.
(10:22):
When you wake up every day in your bedroom byyourself, you know, part of any school, you
know, kind of stop talking to your friends and,you know, you're just literally just you kind
of looking at yourself, you know, in the mirrorevery day, you build your own world kind of.
And you started from ground zero with all yourassumptions of how the day should go and what
you should study.
And there's a certain sort of agency with that.
(10:43):
There's a sense of empowerment with that, butthere's also this feeling of letting go.
So these are some of the things that was kindof going through my mind.
You dropped out of college and you go to raise$1 million for this biotech company that's
gonna change the world.
Yes.
What was the feedback that you were gettingfrom investors?
Because you'd probably be one of the very fewbiotech founders that have no Ph.D., have no
(11:06):
not even a college degree.
What was going on at that time?
I
We've raised a pre-seed round in kind of March2021 at that point.
I texted Cole this angel investor.
He's Corey Levy from Z Fellows.
Highly recommend, by the way, if any, you know,founders starting off the journey.
(11:26):
Definitely apply to Z Fellows.
It's a fantastic program.
The community is so great.
And I texted Corey and, you know, he basicallyignored the text.
Yeah.
There's just two phones at the time.
Probably still does.
I had two phones, and, you know, he didn'tcheck the other phone for weeks.
Eventually, we got on the phone.
And then, you know, I probably gave the most,like, aggressive, garbled pitch.
You know, nuclear says, whoa.
(11:47):
It's like, oh my God.
What did he just say?
Like, why, you know, what the hell if I had theworst pitch ever given?
And then I remember him being like, oh, youknow, you should talk to this, you know, other
person's kind of, you know, a friend of mine.
I said, okay.
His name was Ed Lando at Pareto.
I'm stuck on the phone with Ed and Corey.
I think, you know, maybe a week later.
And then, maybe 24 hours after that, they, youknow, said we want to invest, you know,
$200,000.
There's a video
on this Nest
camera that we have in
my home of it's raining.
There's no one home that day for whateverreason, which is actually pretty weird.
(12:17):
But I literally grabbed, you know, screaming inthe rain because of such a kind of such a
release.
Right?
That was how
the journey started from fundraising.
At that
point, brought in a couple of people, and thenwent to raise
a seed round several months later that fall.
The seed round was extremely difficult.
I think Silicon Valley tends to have asystematic sort of underappreciation for not
software plays.
I mean, people tend to invest in things thatyou know, they at least have some sense of.
(12:49):
Right?
Biotech is kinda
spooky.
Right?
Nucleus kind of sits in
the intersection of things that not many peopleare kind of versed in.
Right?
If you made your money in B2B SaaS,
you're not necessarily gonna go after, youknow, the next genomics company.
Right?
It's not exactly how it works.
So effectively, every single investor actuallysaid no until Founders Fund, right, which is,
of course, what Founders Fund's also known for,which is coming in when everyone else is kinda
bearish, they're bullish.
(13:15):
And so that was the kind of initial seed roundof funding.
And then several months later, Alexis Ohaniancame in
and put in another, you know, $12 million orso.
At that point, we became one of the mostwell-backed
next companies ever.
And so what might have seemed like an overnightkind of, quote, quote, success story was years
in the making.
It really was.
Anyway, there was
intense, intense, fervor, pathologicalmotivation that wound up happening.
And that's actually a good lesson for, I think,a lot of especially young founders.
(13:44):
I think the worst thing that could happen foryoung founders is you wake up one day.
I'm gonna do this thing.
Then the next day you raise, you know, a lot ofmoney.
It's bad.
You need to build the intellectual foundation.
You need to build up the intellectual alphathat when you get the capital, there's almost
this, like, exponentiating effect.
We're combining the capital with what you know,you become unstoppable.
(14:06):
For the investors that didn't back you or
Yeah.
said no.
Why did they say no and why are they wrong?
I don't really think about them, honestly.
But, why did they say no?
I mean, they make up all sorts of franklynonsense.
Yeah.
I'll say this.
I do think that a lot of investors did notunderstand the decreasing costs of whole genome
(14:26):
sequencing.
They don't understand that.
They don't understand that there's been aplatform shift in genomics.
And I think founders don't actually know that.
They had that intuition.
They've been, you know, they they've they'veactually been investing at that frontier.
And so I gave them the prepared mind to investin Nucleus.
I think a lot of investors did not had not donetheir diligence.
They had not they had not done their homework.
When you talked about one of the greatesttechnological decreases in cost ever, you would
(14:50):
think an investor would know that, but theydidn't.
And the returns will reflect that.
How old are you today?
24.
What advantage does being a 24-year-old foundergive you?
I think a couple of things.
One is naiveté
or strength.
Especially in this business.
(15:12):
Not knowing
how hard it's going to be enables you to havethe wonderful,
delicious, delusion to begin.
The second thing is it's a fresh perspective ontechnology, society, kind of, clinical,
considerations, a a
Fresh perspective that isn't necessarily boundby a sort of orthodoxy.
And so you end up doing what I think is justmost intuitive, which ends up being kind of
(15:40):
what's best for the customer or what you thinkis best.
And what you think is best, honestly, you'renot burdened by any sort of ideological dead
weight.
Right?
When you're in an industry for so long, andyou've seen so many different kinds of
technical advancements, you're almost held backby the experience just as much as you're held
(16:00):
forward.
Right?
If you think about 23, for example, theirtechnology is, you know, twenty years old.
Crazy to think about it.
They're still actually selling this to people.
Right?
Talk about how it's almost like the burden ofexperience to an extent.
Right?
It's the classic innovator's dilemma problem.
It's always the Google and OpenAI as well.
Right?
You don't wanna kill the golden goose.
Also, I would say that a lot of people with alot of experience, obviously, they're critical.
(16:22):
I mean, we have, you know, plenty of scientistson nuclearists that we work with to develop and
craft our product.
That goes without saying, but you need to havea spirit that is defined by the capitalist
markets, not by academia.
Academia tends to be somewhat moreconservative.
I think Silicon Valley and startups tend to bemore kind of liberal, more aggressive.
(16:43):
We wanna bring the frontier of genomic insightsinto the hands of the people.
Investigation isn't necessarily enterprising.
They're somewhat different.
I think to build a great company, you need tobe both investigative and enterprising.
Right?
You need to be able to harness the wonders andthe beauty of academia, which so much of
Nucleus is based on and we deeply appreciate,with the kind of, you know, optimism and energy
(17:06):
of a Silicon Valley startup.
You know, you always want to find paradoxes, Ithink, in life, and I think that's one of those
paradoxes that makes a company like Nucleus sobeautiful.
We've talked a lot about genomics and genomesequencing, but I want to make sure ourselves
and the audience are all on the same page.
What does that mean in simple terms?
What is genome sequencing?
Everyone starts
(17:28):
off with DNA.
So DNA, you can think of it as the language oflife.
There's around 6,000,000,000 DNA letters thatmake up your genome.
Your genome just means all your DNA.
Old genetic tests would basically look at asmall fraction of these letters.
Think about a book.
With a book that's a thousand pages, they maybelooked at, you know, 10 pages.
(17:50):
Nucleus looks at all 1,000, all your DNA.
So much of genetic research and consumergenetics was based off this older technology.
This, you know, system, this technology lookedat a small chapter.
And I think what's so powerful today is nowthat we can get this entire read, we have
basically, as I mentioned earlier, kind ofcombining all these genetic tests that are on
(18:11):
the market into just one.
And so that's kind of the inception of, youknow, Nucleus.
You mentioned 23andMe.
There are a lot of listeners who might belistening to this and sound like, oh, that
sounds pretty familiar.
Why are you not 23andMe?
What makes you guys different?
Yeah.
It's a good question.
So 23andMe is based off this older technologythat looks at less than 0.1 percent of
(18:33):
someone's DNA.
So because they look at less than 0.1 percentof someone's DNA, they miss tens of thousands
of critical DNA differences that shape yourdisease risk as well as your traits.
They also can't give comprehensive familyplanning to people, amongst other things.
So that's principally why.
Furthermore, we actually integrate a lot morenon-genetic information to our analyses.
(18:54):
Things like cholesterol, A1C levels, etc., tobuild models that can more accurately gauge
someone's overall risk.
So we don't just stop at the genetics,specifically the entirety of someone's genome.
We also incorporate in non-genetic informationas well.
So I get the value of whole genome sequencing.
Yes.
But in one of your interviews, you mentionedthat it's an inevitability that every single
(19:16):
person has their entire genome on their iPhone.
Yeah.
Data and access to information are getting sodemocratized that we often might have too much
information flowing into our brains every day.
How far away are we from seeing this a reality?
And why does it matter that we have this easyaccess to that type of data?
(19:36):
I don't think we have enough health data,frankly.
I think health care is way too qualitative.
It's almost ancient in the way that itoperates.
I mean, what you really need to build is areal-time consumer-centric quantified health
platform that tracks the entirety of someone'shealth data on it.
Right?
So, hey, Kian, it's a 24-year-old male livingin Brooklyn.
(19:56):
Wow.
Your super high LDL levels in the last bloodtest.
That's actually no surprise because you're inthe 98th percentile for familial
hypercholesterolemia, you know, your geneticrisk for high cholesterol.
We found people with similar genetics, sex, andage as you saw, you know, 10% reduction to LDL
levels when they did this specific workoutthat's tracked by your Apple Watch.
All of a sudden, you're kinda closing the loop.
You're integrating different kinds of moleculardiagnostics with your personal hardware device
(20:20):
into one platform.
That's the future.
And that is much more of a data-driven futurethat's contextualized for the patient.
So I agree with you that, like, whole genomesequencing, a ton of data.
You don't wanna just data dump people.
Right?
Instead, you wanna kinda very thoughtfullycommunicate the results to customers.
And I think this is what's so beautiful, whichis in the genomics era, where people have, you
know, the whole genome on the smartphone,
it's not just about the DNA.
It's about the integration of the DNA with the
rest of what someone does.
(20:47):
A lot of people take blood tests.
Maybe they do, you know, body scans.
Maybe they take supplements, right?
To not have your whole genome as part of thatkind of broader picture, you're missing such a
critical kind of foundational element of yourhealth.
You also asked for kind of predictions on whenit's gonna happen.
I think, you know, it's 2024.
I think by 2030, there's no reason why we can'thave hundreds of millions of people sequenced.
(21:08):
There's no reason why.
You've raised tens of millions of dollars fromsome of the most well-known investors in the
world.
How have you gone about, I guess, mainlygetting customers for Nucleus and spreading the
word about what you're building and buildingtrust with consumers at an early level?
One of the reasons why I founded Nucleus was Iwanted better for the industry, not just in the
(21:32):
kind of technical and scientific sense, butalso in the sense of kind of data agency and
trust.
Right?
I felt like the first-generation genetictesting
companies struggled with building that trustand, you know, frankly, did not give people
enough agency
over their DNA.
So Nucleus does things fundamentallydifferently.
First off is we sequence all samples in theUnited States on U.S.
machines, period.
By default, we do not share any genetic orprotected health information with any third
party.
(22:00):
People can download their DNA, their raw DNAfile at any time.
It's yours.
We also are HIPAA compliant.
We're CLIA certified.
We're CAP accredited.
We follow all the kind of regulations thatexist today for lab-developed tests.
In other words, I'm trying to say, we want tobring a kind of clinical quality and data
agency to the customer.
To answer kind of one of your other questionson, like, how are we getting customers?
(22:23):
One of the things that always works best withany consumer products is word-of-mouth.
I think we always strive to build a productthat you want to tell your friends about.
I mean, you kind of lose this when you'retalking about your results.
I'm sure almost instinctively that you got yourresults.
You want to tell your family, want to tell yourfriends.
Right?
I know today, yeah, I got my results, and I wasin the 99th percentile for schizophrenia.
(22:45):
I was like, wow.
I mean, that's crazy.
I would never suspect that.
And still, like, even if you're 90th percentilefor your genetic risk, your overall risk is
still really low.
So I'm okay, you know, God willing.
But that is something that I'm going to tellpeople forever in the sense of, like, you want
to tell your friends, want to tell your family,but also if you're having kids, I mean,
obviously, if you get tested and you're acarrier, certainly, your significant other
should get tested.
(23:06):
Right?
And I think that kind of organic growth is onething to be really focused on.
There's no better marketing than word-of-mouth.
That makes us think people love.
What I've found from interviewing 100entrepreneurs is that the larger your ambition,
the more strenuous and painful the journey is.
What are some of the most painful, toughestchallenges that you've had to go through so far
(23:27):
while building the company?
I mean, there's, like, the old cliché whereit's like, what's the one thing you didn't
realize in starting a startup initially?
And it's always like, oh, well, this is sohard.
It's like those classic answers.
It's like, this is so hard.
So much harder than I, you know, so much harderthan I thought.
How is it hard?
I
think it's hard in a lot of ways.
I think it's I think it's hard.
So if you think about a company, I mean, thinkI mean, imagine this.
(23:48):
Right?
You're in your bedroom, you're one person.
You wake up one day.
You go from literally having nothing.
I mean, no money, no resources, no one evenbelieves in you
except for, you know, yourself, basically.
Do you have $3 million?
I guess you had $200K first and then $3million, but the point is there's a there's a
(24:09):
jump.
There's a woah, and the jump requires, youknow, adaptation, immediate adaptation.
You have to adapt very quickly.
Right?
It's a it's a different kind of thing.
Once money enters, like, the lifeblood of acompany goes from kind of an investigative,
kind of almost research project to anenterprise.
That's a big jump.
Right?
And spend a year to kind of really do, youknow, very intense 10-hour-plus-a-day, deep
work to then needing to hire people, torecruit, you know, to build a product, to go
raise money, you know, to think about theregulations and the regulatory strategy, right,
(24:41):
that's a jump that requires intense adapting,and you have to adapt very quickly.
And that happens at every juncture, right, youknow, when we moved from, you know, one person,
two people, three people to even more, and theneven more, even more, then, also, there's,
like, a whole managing component.
Then all of a sudden, you have, you know,different departments.
You have communications.
You have operations.
You have clinical genetics.
(25:02):
You have science.
You have products.
You know, you have marketing.
And then you have to know how to kinda fit allthese pieces together.
It's emotionally draining because you justgive, I mean, not that it's emotionally
draining.
That's not why it can be physically draining.
Because you can be so tired.
Right?
You work such long hours.
You give something everything that you canpossibly give it.
Literally, everything that a human being cangive, you give it.
(25:26):
You don't get a lot of sleep, but you also loveit.
So in that way, it's not emotionally draining.
It's actually, you know, kind of deeplyemotionally fulfilling too.
So I think kind of the need that it can be, youknow, physically tiring.
It can be a lot to just process.
Like, there's so many different pieces ofinformation and part of the job with
entrepreneurs to balance and to know kind ofwhat to actually focus on, like, you know, the
(25:48):
whole, like, keep the main thing the mainthing.
Yep.
So it's an eclectic mix of things, but it'salso kind of bare in a way because you give
everything you have to it.
Right?
Like, you're putting all your chips on thetable, and there's a vulnerability to that, I
think, that honestly makes it hard, but makesit very intense.
(26:10):
Before we went live, you were talking to meabout all the things that you and the team are
working on, and there's a whole list of sevento 10 things that you're running through in
your head right now.
How do you figure out what are the mostimportant things to focus on?
I think it's all about the customer.
I think it's all about the customer.
And when the customer is the consumer, or thecustomer sometimes for us can also be another
(26:33):
kind of clinic or, you know, we also do certainB2B deals as well.
It's always thinking about how can we providevalue to the customer and starting with the
customer and then kind of building to theproduct.
So a lot of the work that
we do is about kind of satisfying both thosecustomers, and they're a little bit different.
And so there is a balance for me.
I try to, you know, keep the organization kindof focused on one of them as I kind of do
(27:01):
certain B2B sales, but I definitely think italways has to go back to the customer.
You can't get kind of lost in the sauce, so tospeak.
What does the customer want?
What does the customer want?
What's, like, what's the first thing I askedyou when I saw you?
And I'm like, how are your results?
Right?
That's all data collection for me.
Data collection for me.
How can I make this product better?
How can I make it more?
How can I make it more social, right, to wherepeople wanna share the results?
(27:21):
It's easier to share your results, right,because the product is actually pretty
inexpensive for marketing.
Right?
Nothing's better than kind of someone, youknow, I talk about word-of-mouth.
How do you kind of productize word-of-mouth?
Right?
So there's all these different considerations.
What next genomic analysis should I prioritize?
Right?
We're pushing out traits, for example, in acouple of weeks.
That's very exciting.
I would be pushing out, you know,pharmacogenomics and, you know, even some other
(27:42):
really cool features.
How do I kind of balance that?
What's the priority?
What do I wanna accomplish?
What does the customer want?
Right?
The the these are the what what what do I havethe scientific resources for today?
Right?
What what are the regulations?
Right?
I think there's that considerations.
So there's such an eclectic mix of different,kind of pros, projects, tasks, considerations,
especially in this business.
Breakthroughs like this can raise questions.
(28:03):
Sure.
Is it trustworthy?
Yeah.
How do you address those?
Well, I would say that, you know, we're aCLIA-certified CAP-accredited test, which
basically means that we have shown ouranalytical validity.
There's no kind of higher certifications for alab test today in the
United States.
So we're very proud of that.
We're very proud of the calls that we make andthe kind of clinical quality that we provide
our customers.
(28:31):
Privacy is also another big thing that can getfrequently discussed.
And especially when it pertains to personaldata and personal health data, too.
I was reading recently that 23andMe had a hackwhere, like, seven million people had their DNA
exposed through the leak.
How do you deal with stuff like that and how doyou address those concerns?
(28:53):
First off, you have 2FA enabled.
I mean, 23andMe didn't even have 2FA enabled,which is a big problem, which is actually what,
you know, caused that hack where people wouldbasically recycle logins and then people would
log in using their account.
I think it goes well beyond that, though.
I think about privacy security, kind of Imentioned this earlier, you have to start from
the inception of the company.
(29:14):
From the beginning, you have to be thinkingabout privacy security, which I'm very happy to
say we did because we wanted to build somethingbetter for us, right, and then give that to
everyone.
So there's a couple of things that we do.
One is we sequence, you know, in the UnitedStates, on U.S.
machines always without question.
Right?
We don't ship the sample overseas.
We don't ship the sample somewhere in theUnited States and then sequence it on, you
(29:35):
know, Chinese machines.
We don't do that.
Everything we do is in the United States.
People control their data.
By default, we don't share any genetic orprotected health information with any third
party besides service providers like ourphysician network.
Right?
It's that simple.
We are, as I mentioned, CLIA certified, CAPaccredited, the highest quality standard for a
lab-developed test in the United States.
(29:56):
We also let people download their raw data,right, so they can actually download it and do
whatever they want with it.
It's your data.
We separate the genetic information from thePHI, put them in different databases, and we're
also constantly thinking about ways of makingall our servers and all our security better and
better.
Right?
It's not that you just stop.
You don't say, okay, we're secure.
(30:16):
We're good.
Our policies are good.
It's like, how do we get better?
Right?
How do we make sure to prevent?
Right?
It's just like with diseases.
We don't want to treat something after thefact; we're going to prevent it.
One thing I want to
mention on this, though, that I think isinteresting is a lot of people associate
genetics with, like, oh, Golden State Killer
Or, like, the FBI.
What they don't actually realize is if you lookat the last, like, kind of, 15 years that
(30:36):
23andMe has been running, I think they've hadaround, like, 11 subpoenas from law
enforcement, and they've complied with none ofthem.
Google in contrast has around, you know, 20,000a quarter, and they comply with the vast
majority of them.
So I do think there's a bit of a actual kind of
There's this narrative about, you know,genetics and kind of law enforcement and
security, but actually it's not true.
If you look at Facebook, you know, Meta,Google, Amazon, etc., that's actually where law
(31:06):
enforcement goes to get data.
It's not your genetic data.
So I think that's something that I think ispretty interesting.
And so we talked a little bit earlier, but youdon't have a Ph.D., but about half your team
does, which
About half.
Yeah.
Helps you see some blind spots when buildingout the company.
What are some of those blind spots that theysee that help you?
(31:26):
I think honestly the thing with someone havinga Ph.D.
or not, I'm very grateful that I am technicallyvery strong.
I think the thing that they really bring is Iview us as almost like intellectual sparring
partners.
Right?
And to have intellectual sparring partners,it's almost like the old Steve Jobs analogy
(31:47):
where he talks about, like, putting kind ofrocks together, and then, you know, the rocks
they hit and they hit and hit, and they bothcome out kinda beautiful.
That I think is really the magic of havingother scientists on the team, because in any
scientific discipline, anyone who does science,it's not a fixed clear cut.
This is the answer.
(32:08):
Right?
If you want to bring two scientists together,let me tell you they're going to argue about
something inevitably.
That's just the name of how it is.
Right?
So I think they really help elevate theorganizational thinking.
A product level to hold the weight, you know,to the actual underlying kind of algorithmic
level.
Yeah.
And what's your long-term goal for the company?
What do you eventually want to try to buildthis into?
(32:32):
someone needs to build a real-timeconsumer-centric quantified health platform.
Right?
With the entirety of someone's health data,from kind of molecular diagnostics, they'll be
up to kind of different, device collected bywearables, it's interconnected.
Right?
So if you think about nucleus, when we tellsomeone that a higher genetic risk for a
disease, what next, and how do we kind of showpeople how their risk changes, if they get
older, if they lose weight,
if their cholesterol goes up, if theircholesterol goes down, right, if they start
smoking or stop smoking.
(32:52):
Right?
That, I think, is
the beginning of something much more powerful,which is something that can kind of finally
close the loop in health care where it's sooften about treating diseases.
And if there are preventive measures, thepreventive measures are kind of soft.
Right?
It's kind of qualitative.
(33:15):
You want to make it super rigorous, superquantified.
You can really see that kind of today with theNucleus platform.
And then in doing so, you can hopefully makepreventable diseases a thing of the past and
have people just live, you know, much longer.
Things that simple.
And before we wrap it up, we like to end each
interview with a couple of closing questions.
Sure.
One is what's your greatest failure and whatdid you learn from it?
I think one of the greatest failures I had was
not
(33:45):
acting decisively enough when I knew someonewasn't the right fit for the Nucleus team.
Startups are small, right, a bad apple reallydoes ruin the bunch.
And that is one of the things I regret themost.
I think as a founder, the moment you have kindof an icky feeling about someone, they should
(34:06):
be let go of.
They're not the right fit for the organization.
How do you know whether they should truly belet go of, or if you need to do some more
training on your front to help weave them intothe team?
I
think it's a, like, it's never, like, it'salmost like, many drips cause the cup to
overflow versus, like, there's, like, a hugetsunami.
I hope not, at least.
I mean, that's, you know, it's probablypossible, but that's not ideal.
(34:28):
I think you, you know, you get a kind of drip.
You get a feeling.
You gotta feeling.
And then kind of it becomes more and more andmore and more and more and more evident, right,
whether it's the core quality, whether it's theinterpersonal skills, whatever ends up being.
So I think it's both like something that youcan kinda track intellectually, but also with
your intuition.
Right?
So it's not purely intellectual.
It's not purely intuitive.
It's a mix of both.
We can kind of point to very specific thingsthat the person has done that's been
(34:56):
lackluster, but also you kinda get an inkling.
I can also note another good sign is if twopeople independently come to you and both say
something.
That's always a strong sign.
Like, because 1,000, oh, that's interesting.
You know, 2 independently saying the samethings.
We're from different departments about someonethat's always a sign.
So, you know, there's a mixture of things,
but I think you get a feel for it.
And what
scares you the most today?
You know, the ball's in my hands, right, like,I sometimes I think of, like, this is, like, an
(35:27):
NBA player and, you know, you're there toperform.
But when the ball's in your hands, there'sreally nothing to worry about.
You know?
Like, I mean, like, I think fear and stress cankinda come from the unknown.
It can come from when you almost feel like youdon't have agency.
(35:47):
That's where a lot of fear comes from or a lotof stress.
I feel like I have so much agency.
I have so much control.
Like, the ball's in my hands and the fate ofNucleus kind of rests.
And that's beautiful.
There's nothing to be kind of scared of there.
So I don't really view it as fear.
I view it as just like there's, like, energypower.
(36:08):
You know?
What's the best piece of advice you've everreceived?
And what's the worst piece of
advice you've ever received?
The best piece of advice is keep going.
You know, when you're in hell, keep walking,that advice never fails.
You don't stop.
You win.
It's that simple.
Worst piece of advice probably don't drop outof college.
(36:31):
That's the worst.
Why is it the worst?
I mean,
if you got the drive, if you got the energy, ifyou got the dream, you don't belong in college.
I mean, that's just the reality, but it is alsotrue that college has its purpose.
I don't want to kind of, you know, diminish itcompletely.
It does have its purpose.
Doesn't its role.
But if you're ready, if you're ready, go.
(36:55):
I mean, you don't need anything to hold youback.
Yeah.
And lastly, if I slid you over a phone and youcould call your sixteen-year-old self, would
you call?
And if so, what would you say?
Yeah.
I'd call.
I mean, I would call if I just say, follow upwith this.
(37:16):
Do you know what you need to do?
I think people have their calling.
People have their craft.
People have their love.
You have to tap into it, though.
You have to really you have to have the courageto follow through with it.
And I think I would give my younger selfreminder to kind of listen to that little
(37:36):
stream you know, in my consciousness.
How do you tap into it?
Close your eyes, meditate.
I mean, that's literally how you do it, butkind of more metaphysically, like, you know,
like, people know.
You just know that there's some things that aremuch deeper than just like, oh, I know this
(37:56):
fact.
It's much deeper.
It's in your psyche.
It's in your soul.
It's in your kind of soul architecture.
Listen to that.
Business line and then, you know, run as fastand as hard as you can toward it.
It's not gonna be easy, though.
Right?
It never is.
Nothing worthwhile ever comes easy.
No.
(38:16):
No.
Absolutely not.
Awesome.
Well, I think that's a great way to end it.
Kian, thanks for taking the time to join theshow.
We'll have a link to Nucleus in the episodedescription down below for anyone who wants to
take a look, and thanks for joining.
Thank you so much.
Ninety percent of people don't know if theyhave a genetic merit that increases the risk
for these conditions.
I mean, it's pretty insane.
This guy is Kian Sadeghi.
He's a Penn dropout who built a biotech companythat can predict the diseases you might die
from, and how to prevent them from happening.
Last month, I had him at our studio and askedhim to share with me his story and the secret
to how it all works.
So my cousin actually went to bed one night anddidn't wake up the next day.
(00:23):
At the time, you know, I asked my parents, howdoes this happen?
How has this happened?
They kept saying, "No, bad genetics, badgenetics."
Why did you decide to drop out?
You're in
your bedroom.
You're one person.
You wake up one day.
You go from literally having nothing.
No money.
No resources.
Do you have to go
to college?
At that point, we became one of the mostwell-backed genetics companies ever.
Why should somebody like myself even care aboutgetting my whole genome sequenced?
Do you care about being healthy and livingforever?
(00:44):
I try to.
Okay.
So then whole genome is for you.
There's actually several applications of wholegenome sequencing.
One of the first is
Kian, who are you?
And why should the person that's listening tothis podcast listen to you?
That's a great question.
First off, thank you so much for having me.
So around maybe four and a half years ago atthis point, I dropped out of Penn, and I went
(01:07):
all in on building what I thought of as thekind of application layer for DNA or software
for your DNA.
We are undergoing one of the most extraordinarydecreases in costs, one of the greatest
technological changes ever.
That is the decrease in cost of whole genomesequencing or reading the entirety of your DNA.
That used to cost $1 billion; today withNucleus, you can get that for just $3.99.
(01:31):
So I think from my perspective, we are reallybringing to everyone the frontier of genomic
science, which is gonna radically changesociety.
I wanna get back into your backstory tounderstand more about you and why you're on the
journey that you are today.
What event took place when you were youngerthat pushed you to dedicate your life towards
(01:52):
longevity?
I'm a first-generation American.
Both my parents are Persian.
They actually escaped Iran during the Septemberrevolution, came to America, specifically
Brooklyn where I still am.
And, unfortunately, I think the story ofNucleus begins with a personal tragedy.
So my cousin actually went to bed one night anddidn't wake up the next day.
She died in her sleep.
At the time, you know, I asked my parents, howdoes this happen?
How does this happen?
(02:13):
They kept saying no, bad genetics, badgenetics.
Didn't understand what that meant.
Eventually, though, I started studyinggenetics, and what I realized is that disease
isn't really an inherent property of humanbeings but can be viewed more as a problem to
be solved.
And if you'd actually correct for the error insomeone's DNA, you could, you know, well, cure
a disease.
So I joined one of the first do-it-yourselfgene-editing laboratories in the country, where
(02:34):
we engineered yeast to make limonene.
We added bacteria to make them resistant toantibiotics.
And I kind of started thinking, like, what ifyou combine the kind of depth and beauty of
biology with the iterability of programming?
And that led me to going to Penn, where Istudied computational biology for around a year
and a half.
And I was in BIO 221, which is a nice class.
(02:54):
And I remember the chairman of the biologydepartment brought up this beautiful chart, the
one I alluded to earlier in our conversation,and it showed the cost of actually sequencing
all of someone's DNA.
So not a small fraction.
So most of the genetic tests you've heard of,like 23andMe, for example, they look at less
than 0.1% of your DNA.
Right?
Because at the time in 2006, when a companylike 23andMe got started, the cost of
(03:16):
sequencing all 100% was maybe $10 million asample.
Okay?
I remember a couple of years ago, when I waslooking at this chart, the cost had gone down
from $10 million per sample to, at that point,a couple thousand.
And I remember thinking, like, well, what'sgonna happen when that cost goes from a
thousand to basically negligible.
And with that, that was kind of the inceptionof Nucleus, thinking about the gap between
(03:41):
almost what exists today and what's gonna existtomorrow.
And building what you want to exist in thefuture.
That's kind of the creation of Nucleus.
Why should somebody like myself even care aboutgetting my whole genome sequenced?
Like, what's the key value that you'reproviding?
Do you care about being healthy and livingforever?
I try to.
Okay.
So then whole genome is for you.
I think there's actually several applicationsof whole genome sequencing.
(04:03):
One of the first is, like, the name of mycousin, right, shared long QT or doctors
suspected she had long QT.
Long QT is something where if you know yourgenetic risk, you take something called a beta
blocker and reduces your risk of suddenly dyingby 10x.
So, obviously, that's, I mean, that literallysaves your life, a giant test.
Then there are cases where, things like breastcancer or even Alzheimer's, type 2 diabetes,
(04:27):
coronary artery disease, where you can takespecific preventative action today to mitigate
your risk for breast cancer, for example, ifyou always have a BRCA1 or BRCA2, more
aggressive earlier screening, even Alzheimer's,like, a neurogenetic disease.
There are actual lifestyle changes you can maketo reduce your risk of that condition.
Colorectal cancer is a great example, whereit's extremely preventable, right, if you have
(04:52):
greater genetic risk, but most people don'tknow.
There's a crazy statistic that around, I think,90% of people with what's called a pathogenic
variant for breast cancer, colorectal cancer,and familial hypercholesterolemia, which is
like high cholesterol, right, old diseases, bythe way, that are preventable and actionable.
Ninety percent of people don't know they have agenetic variant that increases the risk for
(05:14):
these conditions.
So that means it's pretty insane if you thinkabout it.
That's one other application yet another isobviously family planning.
Right?
You want to have healthy children.
Hundreds of millions of Americans do not knowif they're a carrier for a specific, rare
disease that they could potentially, if theirpartners also care, pass on to their children.
That's an obvious application of whole genomesequencing that anyone who wants to have kids
(05:36):
ought to get their genome sequenced.
Another application is pharmacogenomics, whichis how your DNA affects your metabolism of
different drugs.
And so today, if you look at these differentapplications, a lot of people don't know they
actually all exist in the genome.
It's kind of decentralized.
There are different tests with differentapplications.
Nucleus kind of combines 70,000 genetic tests,70,000 genetic tests into just one.
(05:58):
That's the power of whole genome sequencing.
You engineered yeast a long time ago
Yeah.
To make them resistant to antibiotics.
What did you learn about human biology at thattime?
I think one of the most interesting things isthat you can almost hack biology.
Like, you know, people always think abouthacking in the computer context, but you can
also hack biology, and that there's a code oflife, and the code of life is DNA.
(06:23):
And there are just sometimes these randomerrors that can have kind of disastrous
consequences, but through human beings'ingenuity, we have found a way to correct these
errors.
And I think that idea that biology ismalleable, I think that's really stuck with me
since then, and I think it will stick with meforever.
And you went to Penn,
(06:45):
For a bit.
For a bit.
You decided to drop out.
Why did you decide to drop out and what are thepeople around you who are close to you, your
family, friends, think about that.
I think for me, I was following my bliss.
There's a source of Campbell quote about havingyour inner being and inner plane sort of match
the physical plane, and that's bliss.
And me going after to build Nucleus, to sort ofdo the kind of mad scientist throwing in, going
(07:10):
to the woods and to start, you know,researching, that was my calling.
When you have a calling like that, you ought tohave the courage to go to, like, like, you
know, literally let go of what's, you know,behind what you know.
I found some I think I thought school too couldbe like kind of stifling.
I thought it to be sort of this place wherethere was a habit amongst very smart and
(07:31):
capable people to almost settle in almost likea it was like almost like a factory.
Yeah.
Right?
It was like a factory.
You come in, you know, they calm you down, youknow, you you know, they tried to kind of
stifle your individual creativity or individualgenius because everyone has it, and then they
found you off to McKinsey.
And, you know, that didn't feel right to me.
So I think that's why I left.
And, you know, obviously, my parents weren'thappy with it.
(07:52):
I mean, they're immigrants from Iran.
They very much believe in education as do I,but I think we had different models of kind of
what life could look like and what life couldbe.
I mean, it was very hard though, admittedly.
It's very hard that year.
I said in a previous podcast with, you know,the founder of Morning Brew, I said that, I was
motivated by both love and fear, love of thecraft of kind of building your understanding up
(08:12):
to a scientific frontier and productizing that.
But also a fear, right, a fear of failing, afear of, you know, disappointing basically
everyone I knew.
Also, this kind of constant stress from, youknow, parents and society more broadly with,
like, you're kind of wasting your time.
You're a waste of space almost.
So there was that love and that fear in thatbalance, but that balance also propelled me
(08:34):
forward to have almost a maniacal focus onbuilding.
You mentioned it was a very hard year.
What was going on behind the scenes orinternally in your head that you were thinking
about in trying to get done?
So one of the first things I did was I figuredthat I should read a research paper at the
(08:56):
frontier of genomics and then build myunderstanding up to that paper.
Right?
It's almost like, this is where I want to endup.
I don't understand these things.
Now let me go start researching those things.
So there's a lot of statistical genetics,computational genomics, a lot of independent
learning, a lot of notebooks.
I mean, there's a picture on Twitter of, like,I think eighteen subject notebooks with
(09:16):
material.
And so what you have to do when doingindependent work, deep independent research is
you both have to make the curriculum and thenoperate within the curriculum.
And that's the only thing a lot of people don'tfully understand, which is if you go to school,
for example, at school, you know, the firstday, what do they do?
They hand your syllabus.
You know, they say, okay.
This is what we're gonna do.
This is kind of the plan.
This is what we're gonna study.
(09:37):
And you're almost operating under someoneelse's kind of model of the subject.
The difficult thing about independent researchis actually not necessarily doing it.
It's what to do and in what progression.
That's actually the hard thing to figure out.
So you had to both because you also don't knowthe subject well enough to know what the steps
(10:00):
should be.
So there's so many difficulties with that.
So you kind of have to both be the designer ofyour system and then operate within your
system.
And I think something I realized during thisyear was that sort of all the kind of and it's
funny because I think about this a lot morewith startups, but all these sort of thinking
that I had been operating in my entire lifedissipated, was gone.
(10:22):
When you wake up every day in your bedroom byyourself, you know, part of any school, you
know, kind of stop talking to your friends and,you know, you're just literally just you kind
of looking at yourself, you know, in the mirrorevery day, you build your own world kind of.
And you started from ground zero with all yourassumptions of how the day should go and what
you should study.
And there's a certain sort of agency with that.
(10:43):
There's a sense of empowerment with that, butthere's also this feeling of letting go.
So these are some of the things that was kindof going through my mind.
You dropped out of college and you go to raise$1 million for this biotech company that's
gonna change the world.
Yes.
What was the feedback that you were gettingfrom investors?
Because you'd probably be one of the very fewbiotech founders that have no Ph.D., have no
(11:06):
not even a college degree.
What was going on at that time?
I
We've raised a pre-seed round in kind of March2021 at that point.
I texted Cole this angel investor.
He's Corey Levy from Z Fellows.
Highly recommend, by the way, if any, you know,founders starting off the journey.
(11:26):
Definitely apply to Z Fellows.
It's a fantastic program.
The community is so great.
And I texted Corey and, you know, he basicallyignored the text.
Yeah.
There's just two phones at the time.
Probably still does.
I had two phones, and, you know, he didn'tcheck the other phone for weeks.
Eventually, we got on the phone.
And then, you know, I probably gave the most,like, aggressive, garbled pitch.
You know, nuclear says, whoa.
(11:47):
It's like, oh my God.
What did he just say?
Like, why, you know, what the hell if I had theworst pitch ever given?
And then I remember him being like, oh, youknow, you should talk to this, you know, other
person's kind of, you know, a friend of mine.
I said, okay.
His name was Ed Lando at Pareto.
I'm stuck on the phone with Ed and Corey.
I think, you know, maybe a week later.
And then, maybe 24 hours after that, they, youknow, said we want to invest, you know,
$200,000.
There's a video
on this Nest
camera that we have in
my home of it's raining.
There's no one home that day for whateverreason, which is actually pretty weird.
(12:17):
But I literally grabbed, you know, screaming inthe rain because of such a kind of such a
release.
Right?
That was how
the journey started from fundraising.
At that
point, brought in a couple of people, and thenwent to raise
a seed round several months later that fall.
The seed round was extremely difficult.
I think Silicon Valley tends to have asystematic sort of underappreciation for not
software plays.
I mean, people tend to invest in things thatyou know, they at least have some sense of.
(12:49):
Right?
Biotech is kinda
spooky.
Right?
Nucleus kind of sits in
the intersection of things that not many peopleare kind of versed in.
Right?
If you made your money in B2B SaaS,
you're not necessarily gonna go after, youknow, the next genomics company.
Right?
It's not exactly how it works.
So effectively, every single investor actuallysaid no until Founders Fund, right, which is,
of course, what Founders Fund's also known for,which is coming in when everyone else is kinda
bearish, they're bullish.
(13:15):
And so that was the kind of initial seed roundof funding.
And then several months later, Alexis Ohaniancame in
and put in another, you know, $12 million orso.
At that point, we became one of the mostwell-backed
next companies ever.
And so what might have seemed like an overnightkind of, quote, quote, success story was years
in the making.
It really was.
Anyway, there was
intense, intense, fervor, pathologicalmotivation that wound up happening.
And that's actually a good lesson for, I think,a lot of especially young founders.
(13:44):
I think the worst thing that could happen foryoung founders is you wake up one day.
I'm gonna do this thing.
Then the next day you raise, you know, a lot ofmoney.
It's bad.
You need to build the intellectual foundation.
You need to build up the intellectual alphathat when you get the capital, there's almost
this, like, exponentiating effect.
We're combining the capital with what you know,you become unstoppable.
(14:06):
For the investors that didn't back you or
Yeah.
said no.
Why did they say no and why are they wrong?
I don't really think about them, honestly.
But, why did they say no?
I mean, they make up all sorts of franklynonsense.
Yeah.
I'll say this.
I do think that a lot of investors did notunderstand the decreasing costs of whole genome
(14:26):
sequencing.
They don't understand that.
They don't understand that there's been aplatform shift in genomics.
And I think founders don't actually know that.
They had that intuition.
They've been, you know, they they've they'veactually been investing at that frontier.
And so I gave them the prepared mind to investin Nucleus.
I think a lot of investors did not had not donetheir diligence.
They had not they had not done their homework.
When you talked about one of the greatesttechnological decreases in cost ever, you would
(14:50):
think an investor would know that, but theydidn't.
And the returns will reflect that.
How old are you today?
24.
What advantage does being a 24-year-old foundergive you?
I think a couple of things.
One is naiveté
or strength.
Especially in this business.
(15:12):
Not knowing
how hard it's going to be enables you to havethe wonderful,
delicious, delusion to begin.
The second thing is it's a fresh perspective ontechnology, society, kind of, clinical,
considerations, a a
Fresh perspective that isn't necessarily boundby a sort of orthodoxy.
And so you end up doing what I think is justmost intuitive, which ends up being kind of
(15:40):
what's best for the customer or what you thinkis best.
And what you think is best, honestly, you'renot burdened by any sort of ideological dead
weight.
Right?
When you're in an industry for so long, andyou've seen so many different kinds of
technical advancements, you're almost held backby the experience just as much as you're held
(16:00):
forward.
Right?
If you think about 23, for example, theirtechnology is, you know, twenty years old.
Crazy to think about it.
They're still actually selling this to people.
Right?
Talk about how it's almost like the burden ofexperience to an extent.
Right?
It's the classic innovator's dilemma problem.
It's always the Google and OpenAI as well.
Right?
You don't wanna kill the golden goose.
Also, I would say that a lot of people with alot of experience, obviously, they're critical.
(16:22):
I mean, we have, you know, plenty of scientistson nuclearists that we work with to develop and
craft our product.
That goes without saying, but you need to havea spirit that is defined by the capitalist
markets, not by academia.
Academia tends to be somewhat moreconservative.
I think Silicon Valley and startups tend to bemore kind of liberal, more aggressive.
(16:43):
We wanna bring the frontier of genomic insightsinto the hands of the people.
Investigation isn't necessarily enterprising.
They're somewhat different.
I think to build a great company, you need tobe both investigative and enterprising.
Right?
You need to be able to harness the wonders andthe beauty of academia, which so much of
Nucleus is based on and we deeply appreciate,with the kind of, you know, optimism and energy
(17:06):
of a Silicon Valley startup.
You know, you always want to find paradoxes, Ithink, in life, and I think that's one of those
paradoxes that makes a company like Nucleus sobeautiful.
We've talked a lot about genomics and genomesequencing, but I want to make sure ourselves
and the audience are all on the same page.
What does that mean in simple terms?
What is genome sequencing?
Everyone starts
(17:28):
off with DNA.
So DNA, you can think of it as the language oflife.
There's around 6,000,000,000 DNA letters thatmake up your genome.
Your genome just means all your DNA.
Old genetic tests would basically look at asmall fraction of these letters.
Think about a book.
With a book that's a thousand pages, they maybelooked at, you know, 10 pages.
(17:50):
Nucleus looks at all 1,000, all your DNA.
So much of genetic research and consumergenetics was based off this older technology.
This, you know, system, this technology lookedat a small chapter.
And I think what's so powerful today is nowthat we can get this entire read, we have
basically, as I mentioned earlier, kind ofcombining all these genetic tests that are on
(18:11):
the market into just one.
And so that's kind of the inception of, youknow, Nucleus.
You mentioned 23andMe.
There are a lot of listeners who might belistening to this and sound like, oh, that
sounds pretty familiar.
Why are you not 23andMe?
What makes you guys different?
Yeah.
It's a good question.
So 23andMe is based off this older technologythat looks at less than 0.1 percent of
(18:33):
someone's DNA.
So because they look at less than 0.1 percentof someone's DNA, they miss tens of thousands
of critical DNA differences that shape yourdisease risk as well as your traits.
They also can't give comprehensive familyplanning to people, amongst other things.
So that's principally why.
Furthermore, we actually integrate a lot morenon-genetic information to our analyses.
(18:54):
Things like cholesterol, A1C levels, etc., tobuild models that can more accurately gauge
someone's overall risk.
So we don't just stop at the genetics,specifically the entirety of someone's genome.
We also incorporate in non-genetic informationas well.
So I get the value of whole genome sequencing.
Yes.
But in one of your interviews, you mentionedthat it's an inevitability that every single
(19:16):
person has their entire genome on their iPhone.
Yeah.
Data and access to information are getting sodemocratized that we often might have too much
information flowing into our brains every day.
How far away are we from seeing this a reality?
And why does it matter that we have this easyaccess to that type of data?
(19:36):
I don't think we have enough health data,frankly.
I think health care is way too qualitative.
It's almost ancient in the way that itoperates.
I mean, what you really need to build is areal-time consumer-centric quantified health
platform that tracks the entirety of someone'shealth data on it.
Right?
So, hey, Kian, it's a 24-year-old male livingin Brooklyn.
(19:56):
Wow.
Your super high LDL levels in the last bloodtest.
That's actually no surprise because you're inthe 98th percentile for familial
hypercholesterolemia, you know, your geneticrisk for high cholesterol.
We found people with similar genetics, sex, andage as you saw, you know, 10% reduction to LDL
levels when they did this specific workoutthat's tracked by your Apple Watch.
All of a sudden, you're kinda closing the loop.
You're integrating different kinds of moleculardiagnostics with your personal hardware device
(20:20):
into one platform.
That's the future.
And that is much more of a data-driven futurethat's contextualized for the patient.
So I agree with you that, like, whole genomesequencing, a ton of data.
You don't wanna just data dump people.
Right?
Instead, you wanna kinda very thoughtfullycommunicate the results to customers.
And I think this is what's so beautiful, whichis in the genomics era, where people have, you
know, the whole genome on the smartphone,
it's not just about the DNA.
It's about the integration of the DNA with the
rest of what someone does.
(20:47):
A lot of people take blood tests.
Maybe they do, you know, body scans.
Maybe they take supplements, right?
To not have your whole genome as part of thatkind of broader picture, you're missing such a
critical kind of foundational element of yourhealth.
You also asked for kind of predictions on whenit's gonna happen.
I think, you know, it's 2024.
I think by 2030, there's no reason why we can'thave hundreds of millions of people sequenced.
(21:08):
There's no reason why.
You've raised tens of millions of dollars fromsome of the most well-known investors in the
world.
How have you gone about, I guess, mainlygetting customers for Nucleus and spreading the
word about what you're building and buildingtrust with consumers at an early level?
One of the reasons why I founded Nucleus was Iwanted better for the industry, not just in the
(21:32):
kind of technical and scientific sense, butalso in the sense of kind of data agency and
trust.
Right?
I felt like the first-generation genetictesting
companies struggled with building that trustand, you know, frankly, did not give people
enough agency
over their DNA.
So Nucleus does things fundamentallydifferently.
First off is we sequence all samples in theUnited States on U.S.
machines, period.
By default, we do not share any genetic orprotected health information with any third
party.
(22:00):
People can download their DNA, their raw DNAfile at any time.
It's yours.
We also are HIPAA compliant.
We're CLIA certified.
We're CAP accredited.
We follow all the kind of regulations thatexist today for lab-developed tests.
In other words, I'm trying to say, we want tobring a kind of clinical quality and data
agency to the customer.
To answer kind of one of your other questionson, like, how are we getting customers?
(22:23):
One of the things that always works best withany consumer products is word-of-mouth.
I think we always strive to build a productthat you want to tell your friends about.
I mean, you kind of lose this when you'retalking about your results.
I'm sure almost instinctively that you got yourresults.
You want to tell your family, want to tell yourfriends.
Right?
I know today, yeah, I got my results, and I wasin the 99th percentile for schizophrenia.
(22:45):
I was like, wow.
I mean, that's crazy.
I would never suspect that.
And still, like, even if you're 90th percentilefor your genetic risk, your overall risk is
still really low.
So I'm okay, you know, God willing.
But that is something that I'm going to tellpeople forever in the sense of, like, you want
to tell your friends, want to tell your family,but also if you're having kids, I mean,
obviously, if you get tested and you're acarrier, certainly, your significant other
should get tested.
(23:06):
Right?
And I think that kind of organic growth is onething to be really focused on.
There's no better marketing than word-of-mouth.
That makes us think people love.
What I've found from interviewing 100entrepreneurs is that the larger your ambition,
the more strenuous and painful the journey is.
What are some of the most painful, toughestchallenges that you've had to go through so far
(23:27):
while building the company?
I mean, there's, like, the old cliché whereit's like, what's the one thing you didn't
realize in starting a startup initially?
And it's always like, oh, well, this is sohard.
It's like those classic answers.
It's like, this is so hard.
So much harder than I, you know, so much harderthan I thought.
How is it hard?
I
think it's hard in a lot of ways.
I think it's I think it's hard.
So if you think about a company, I mean, thinkI mean, imagine this.
(23:48):
Right?
You're in your bedroom, you're one person.
You wake up one day.
You go from literally having nothing.
I mean, no money, no resources, no one evenbelieves in you
except for, you know, yourself, basically.
Do you have $3 million?
I guess you had $200K first and then $3million, but the point is there's a there's a
(24:09):
jump.
There's a woah, and the jump requires, youknow, adaptation, immediate adaptation.
You have to adapt very quickly.
Right?
It's a it's a different kind of thing.
Once money enters, like, the lifeblood of acompany goes from kind of an investigative,
kind of almost research project to anenterprise.
That's a big jump.
Right?
And spend a year to kind of really do, youknow, very intense 10-hour-plus-a-day, deep
work to then needing to hire people, torecruit, you know, to build a product, to go
raise money, you know, to think about theregulations and the regulatory strategy, right,
(24:41):
that's a jump that requires intense adapting,and you have to adapt very quickly.
And that happens at every juncture, right, youknow, when we moved from, you know, one person,
two people, three people to even more, and theneven more, even more, then, also, there's,
like, a whole managing component.
Then all of a sudden, you have, you know,different departments.
You have communications.
You have operations.
You have clinical genetics.
(25:02):
You have science.
You have products.
You know, you have marketing.
And then you have to know how to kinda fit allthese pieces together.
It's emotionally draining because you justgive, I mean, not that it's emotionally
draining.
That's not why it can be physically draining.
Because you can be so tired.
Right?
You work such long hours.
You give something everything that you canpossibly give it.
Literally, everything that a human being cangive, you give it.
(25:26):
You don't get a lot of sleep, but you also loveit.
So in that way, it's not emotionally draining.
It's actually, you know, kind of deeplyemotionally fulfilling too.
So I think kind of the need that it can be, youknow, physically tiring.
It can be a lot to just process.
Like, there's so many different pieces ofinformation and part of the job with
entrepreneurs to balance and to know kind ofwhat to actually focus on, like, you know, the
(25:48):
whole, like, keep the main thing the mainthing.
Yep.
So it's an eclectic mix of things, but it'salso kind of bare in a way because you give
everything you have to it.
Right?
Like, you're putting all your chips on thetable, and there's a vulnerability to that, I
think, that honestly makes it hard, but makesit very intense.
(26:10):
Before we went live, you were talking to meabout all the things that you and the team are
working on, and there's a whole list of sevento 10 things that you're running through in
your head right now.
How do you figure out what are the mostimportant things to focus on?
I think it's all about the customer.
I think it's all about the customer.
And when the customer is the consumer, or thecustomer sometimes for us can also be another
(26:33):
kind of clinic or, you know, we also do certainB2B deals as well.
It's always thinking about how can we providevalue to the customer and starting with the
customer and then kind of building to theproduct.
So a lot of the work that
we do is about kind of satisfying both thosecustomers, and they're a little bit different.
And so there is a balance for me.
I try to, you know, keep the organization kindof focused on one of them as I kind of do
(27:01):
certain B2B sales, but I definitely think italways has to go back to the customer.
You can't get kind of lost in the sauce, so tospeak.
What does the customer want?
What does the customer want?
What's, like, what's the first thing I askedyou when I saw you?
And I'm like, how are your results?
Right?
That's all data collection for me.
Data collection for me.
How can I make this product better?
How can I make it more?
How can I make it more social, right, to wherepeople wanna share the results?
(27:21):
It's easier to share your results, right,because the product is actually pretty
inexpensive for marketing.
Right?
Nothing's better than kind of someone, youknow, I talk about word-of-mouth.
How do you kind of productize word-of-mouth?
Right?
So there's all these different considerations.
What next genomic analysis should I prioritize?
Right?
We're pushing out traits, for example, in acouple of weeks.
That's very exciting.
I would be pushing out, you know,pharmacogenomics and, you know, even some other
(27:42):
really cool features.
How do I kind of balance that?
What's the priority?
What do I wanna accomplish?
What does the customer want?
Right?
The the these are the what what what do I havethe scientific resources for today?
Right?
What what are the regulations?
Right?
I think there's that considerations.
So there's such an eclectic mix of different,kind of pros, projects, tasks, considerations,
especially in this business.
Breakthroughs like this can raise questions.
(28:03):
Sure.
Is it trustworthy?
Yeah.
How do you address those?
Well, I would say that, you know, we're aCLIA-certified CAP-accredited test, which
basically means that we have shown ouranalytical validity.
There's no kind of higher certifications for alab test today in the
United States.
So we're very proud of that.
We're very proud of the calls that we make andthe kind of clinical quality that we provide
our customers.
(28:31):
Privacy is also another big thing that can getfrequently discussed.
And especially when it pertains to personaldata and personal health data, too.
I was reading recently that 23andMe had a hackwhere, like, seven million people had their DNA
exposed through the leak.
How do you deal with stuff like that and how doyou address those concerns?
(28:53):
First off, you have 2FA enabled.
I mean, 23andMe didn't even have 2FA enabled,which is a big problem, which is actually what,
you know, caused that hack where people wouldbasically recycle logins and then people would
log in using their account.
I think it goes well beyond that, though.
I think about privacy security, kind of Imentioned this earlier, you have to start from
the inception of the company.
(29:14):
From the beginning, you have to be thinkingabout privacy security, which I'm very happy to
say we did because we wanted to build somethingbetter for us, right, and then give that to
everyone.
So there's a couple of things that we do.
One is we sequence, you know, in the UnitedStates, on U.S.
machines always without question.
Right?
We don't ship the sample overseas.
We don't ship the sample somewhere in theUnited States and then sequence it on, you
(29:35):
know, Chinese machines.
We don't do that.
Everything we do is in the United States.
People control their data.
By default, we don't share any genetic orprotected health information with any third
party besides service providers like ourphysician network.
Right?
It's that simple.
We are, as I mentioned, CLIA certified, CAPaccredited, the highest quality standard for a
lab-developed test in the United States.
(29:56):
We also let people download their raw data,right, so they can actually download it and do
whatever they want with it.
It's your data.
We separate the genetic information from thePHI, put them in different databases, and we're
also constantly thinking about ways of makingall our servers and all our security better and
better.
Right?
It's not that you just stop.
You don't say, okay, we're secure.
(30:16):
We're good.
Our policies are good.
It's like, how do we get better?
Right?
How do we make sure to prevent?
Right?
It's just like with diseases.
We don't want to treat something after thefact; we're going to prevent it.
One thing I want to
mention on this, though, that I think isinteresting is a lot of people associate
genetics with, like, oh, Golden State Killer
Or, like, the FBI.
What they don't actually realize is if you lookat the last, like, kind of, 15 years that
(30:36):
23andMe has been running, I think they've hadaround, like, 11 subpoenas from law
enforcement, and they've complied with none ofthem.
Google in contrast has around, you know, 20,000a quarter, and they comply with the vast
majority of them.
So I do think there's a bit of a actual kind of
There's this narrative about, you know,genetics and kind of law enforcement and
security, but actually it's not true.
If you look at Facebook, you know, Meta,Google, Amazon, etc., that's actually where law
(31:06):
enforcement goes to get data.
It's not your genetic data.
So I think that's something that I think ispretty interesting.
And so we talked a little bit earlier, but youdon't have a Ph.D., but about half your team
does, which
About half.
Yeah.
Helps you see some blind spots when buildingout the company.
What are some of those blind spots that theysee that help you?
(31:26):
I think honestly the thing with someone havinga Ph.D.
or not, I'm very grateful that I am technicallyvery strong.
I think the thing that they really bring is Iview us as almost like intellectual sparring
partners.
Right?
And to have intellectual sparring partners,it's almost like the old Steve Jobs analogy
(31:47):
where he talks about, like, putting kind ofrocks together, and then, you know, the rocks
they hit and they hit and hit, and they bothcome out kinda beautiful.
That I think is really the magic of havingother scientists on the team, because in any
scientific discipline, anyone who does science,it's not a fixed clear cut.
This is the answer.
(32:08):
Right?
If you want to bring two scientists together,let me tell you they're going to argue about
something inevitably.
That's just the name of how it is.
Right?
So I think they really help elevate theorganizational thinking.
A product level to hold the weight, you know,to the actual underlying kind of algorithmic
level.
Yeah.
And what's your long-term goal for the company?
What do you eventually want to try to buildthis into?
(32:32):
someone needs to build a real-timeconsumer-centric quantified health platform.
Right?
With the entirety of someone's health data,from kind of molecular diagnostics, they'll be
up to kind of different, device collected bywearables, it's interconnected.
Right?
So if you think about nucleus, when we tellsomeone that a higher genetic risk for a
disease, what next, and how do we kind of showpeople how their risk changes, if they get
older, if they lose weight,
if their cholesterol goes up, if theircholesterol goes down, right, if they start
smoking or stop smoking.
(32:52):
Right?
That, I think, is
the beginning of something much more powerful,which is something that can kind of finally
close the loop in health care where it's sooften about treating diseases.
And if there are preventive measures, thepreventive measures are kind of soft.
Right?
It's kind of qualitative.
(33:15):
You want to make it super rigorous, superquantified.
You can really see that kind of today with theNucleus platform.
And then in doing so, you can hopefully makepreventable diseases a thing of the past and
have people just live, you know, much longer.
Things that simple.
And before we wrap it up, we like to end each
interview with a couple of closing questions.
Sure.
One is what's your greatest failure and whatdid you learn from it?
I think one of the greatest failures I had was
not
(33:45):
acting decisively enough when I knew someonewasn't the right fit for the Nucleus team.
Startups are small, right, a bad apple reallydoes ruin the bunch.
And that is one of the things I regret themost.
I think as a founder, the moment you have kindof an icky feeling about someone, they should
(34:06):
be let go of.
They're not the right fit for the organization.
How do you know whether they should truly belet go of, or if you need to do some more
training on your front to help weave them intothe team?
I
think it's a, like, it's never, like, it'salmost like, many drips cause the cup to
overflow versus, like, there's, like, a hugetsunami.
I hope not, at least.
I mean, that's, you know, it's probablypossible, but that's not ideal.
(34:28):
I think you, you know, you get a kind of drip.
You get a feeling.
You gotta feeling.
And then kind of it becomes more and more andmore and more and more and more evident, right,
whether it's the core quality, whether it's theinterpersonal skills, whatever ends up being.
So I think it's both like something that youcan kinda track intellectually, but also with
your intuition.
Right?
So it's not purely intellectual.
It's not purely intuitive.
It's a mix of both.
We can kind of point to very specific thingsthat the person has done that's been
(34:56):
lackluster, but also you kinda get an inkling.
I can also note another good sign is if twopeople independently come to you and both say
something.
That's always a strong sign.
Like, because 1,000, oh, that's interesting.
You know, 2 independently saying the samethings.
We're from different departments about someonethat's always a sign.
So, you know, there's a mixture of things,
but I think you get a feel for it.
And what
scares you the most today?
You know, the ball's in my hands, right, like,I sometimes I think of, like, this is, like, an
(35:27):
NBA player and, you know, you're there toperform.
But when the ball's in your hands, there'sreally nothing to worry about.
You know?
Like, I mean, like, I think fear and stress cankinda come from the unknown.
It can come from when you almost feel like youdon't have agency.
(35:47):
That's where a lot of fear comes from or a lotof stress.
I feel like I have so much agency.
I have so much control.
Like, the ball's in my hands and the fate ofNucleus kind of rests.
And that's beautiful.
There's nothing to be kind of scared of there.
So I don't really view it as fear.
I view it as just like there's, like, energypower.
(36:08):
You know?
What's the best piece of advice you've everreceived?
And what's the worst piece of
advice you've ever received?
The best piece of advice is keep going.
You know, when you're in hell, keep walking,that advice never fails.
You don't stop.
You win.
It's that simple.
Worst piece of advice probably don't drop outof college.
(36:31):
That's the worst.
Why is it the worst?
I mean,
if you got the drive, if you got the energy, ifyou got the dream, you don't belong in college.
I mean, that's just the reality, but it is alsotrue that college has its purpose.
I don't want to kind of, you know, diminish itcompletely.
It does have its purpose.
Doesn't its role.
But if you're ready, if you're ready, go.
(36:55):
I mean, you don't need anything to hold youback.
Yeah.
And lastly, if I slid you over a phone and youcould call your sixteen-year-old self, would
you call?
And if so, what would you say?
Yeah.
I'd call.
I mean, I would call if I just say, follow upwith this.
(37:16):
Do you know what you need to do?
I think people have their calling.
People have their craft.
People have their love.
You have to tap into it, though.
You have to really you have to have the courageto follow through with it.
And I think I would give my younger selfreminder to kind of listen to that little
(37:36):
stream you know, in my consciousness.
How do you tap into it?
Close your eyes, meditate.
I mean, that's literally how you do it, butkind of more metaphysically, like, you know,
like, people know.
You just know that there's some things that aremuch deeper than just like, oh, I know this
(37:56):
fact.
It's much deeper.
It's in your psyche.
It's in your soul.
It's in your kind of soul architecture.
Listen to that.
Business line and then, you know, run as fastand as hard as you can toward it.
It's not gonna be easy, though.
Right?
It never is.
Nothing worthwhile ever comes easy.
No.
(38:16):
No.
Absolutely not.
Awesome.
Well, I think that's a great way to end it.
Kian, thanks for taking the time to join theshow.
We'll have a link to Nucleus in the episodedescription down below for anyone who wants to
take a look, and thanks for joining.
Thank you so much.
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